


fuzzy navel boy

by mabufus



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Bartender AU, Meet-Cute, don't think too hard about it lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 19:17:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13817715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mabufus/pseuds/mabufus
Summary: Sasha presses her lips together. “A what?”Rhys clears his throat. “A f-fuzzy navel.” This did not come out more confident than the first time he had said it. There is still no eye contact made, but Rhys can feel Sasha’s eyes on him.“That’s what I thought you said,” she mumbles, trying to suppress a laugh.Rhys sighs. Still no eye contact. “They taste good, okay?”“No judgment here, fuzzy navel boy.”-- rated T for alcohol





	fuzzy navel boy

**Author's Note:**

> meet cute fics are so fun to write....also i just love writing rhysha....i love their dynamic it's some good stuff. also i don't really have anything against sasha/august i just think they're better as friends tbh?

“Shift ends in 15, Sash.” August calls from behind the bar. He sets a dirty glass next to some other dirty dishes, and then rolls up the cuffs of his long-sleeved shirt.

“Mine or yours?” Sasha asks, already knowing the answer. She sighs, stretching her arms out on the bar table. Fiona was sick, leaving Sasha as the only person who could cover her shift. That also made it Sasha’s second shift for the day; she wouldn’t be leaving the bar for at least another 4 hours.

“You wish it was yours,” August says with a hearty chuckle, but stops in his tracks when Sasha shoots him a glare.

“Fiona _so_ owes me,” Sasha mumbles under her breath. “Double shifts are the _worst_.” Suddenly, an idea comes to mind. With a glint in her eye and a voice as sweet and smooth as caramel, she decides to give it a try.

“ _Hey, Auggie, we should_ –”

August stops her there. “ _Don’t_ call me that. And _no,_ we’re not closing the bar early.”

“There’s no one here!” she grumbles, motioning to the empty bar.

“A customer literally left a few minutes ago,” August points out.

Sasha crosses her arm, a way she often admits defeat. “Fine.”

“Thanks, Sash.” August says, blowing her a kiss.

“Yeah, yeah. Get out of here.” Sasha mutters, waving an annoyed hand at him.

August was kind enough to clean up the last customer’s mess before he left, but in a weird way Sasha kind of wish he hadn’t, because there was literally _nothing_ for her to do.

Sasha sighs once more when she realizes it’s just her. “And then there was one,” she mumbles out loud to the empty room. She puts her hands on her hips. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?”

Ten very slow minutes go by, and it’s after she’s counted each individual peanut in one of the peanut jars they keep under the bar three times that she gets visibly frustrated with the fact that no customers were coming in.  She decides to fidget with a bar glass to keep her cool.

“Are you still open?” a voice calls from the bar entrance.

Sasha jumps, causing the glass to slip and fall on the floor, instantly breaking into pieces. “Shit,” she mumbles. Looking for a profile to match the voice she heard, she only sees a head peering behind the bar door with a horrified expression.

“I’m so sorry!” the mystery person says, now fully running into the bar to Sasha’s aid. He stops at the bar. “I’ll pay for that glass,” he says. “Are you hurt?”

Sasha shakes her head. “Nope.”

There comes a sigh of relief from the mystery man. “Thank God,” he says. He holds out his hand to Sasha. “I’m Rhys,” he greets her.

Sasha shakes it. “Sasha.”

“Again, I’m _really_ sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Sasha says. “In a weird way, I’d actually like to thank you.” She turns to Rhys. “You finally gave me something to do. I was about to lose my mind in here.”

“Happy to be of service, then.” Rhys says with a grin. “Although, next time I’ll try to…not break stuff.”

“How generous of you, kind stranger.”

Rhys laughs awkwardly.

“Well…” Sasha trails off. “I’ll be right back, so I can sweep this up. Then you can order, okay?”

Rhys nods and Sasha disappears to the backroom. Within seconds, she reappears, broom and dustpan in hand. When she’s done sweeping, Sasha props the broom and dustpan against the bar.

“Know what you want?” she asks.

Rhys begins to fidget with hands. “…Fuzzy navel.” He does not make eye contact with Sasha.

Sasha presses her lips together. “ _A what_?”

Rhys clears his throat. “A f-fuzzy navel.” This did not come out more confident than the first time he had said it. There is still no eye contact made, but Rhys can feel Sasha’s eyes on him.

“That’s what I thought you said,” she mumbles, trying to suppress a laugh.

Rhys sighs. Still no eye contact. “They taste good, okay?”

“No judgment here, fuzzy navel boy.”

“ _Rhys_.”

“Yeah, yeah. My bad.”

Rhys bites his lip. He finally gets the courage to make eye contact with Sasha, to realize that she’s been looking at him this whole time.

They break eye contact when Sasha leans down to grab a glass and a bottle of peach schnapps and a jug of orange juice. She picks up the peach schnapps, and then stops in her tracks. “Light ice?” she asks.

Rhys nods.  “Yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”

Sasha dips the shaker into the ice box beneath the bar, but not very far. She lifts the cup back up, checking to see if that was a sufficient amount of light ice.

Rhys watches her. It kind of feels like watching a magician perform some kind of food magic.

“So, Rhys,” Sasha says, and it literally jumps Rhys out of his fixation on watching her fix up his drink. “Why are you here on a Thursday night at—“ she glances at the clock on the wall and sighs to herself, “8:30PM?” The bar doesn’t close until 11, but even then, Sasha wouldn’t probably leave until midnight.

“My girlfriend, _Stacey_ ,” he mutters loudly, putting a harsh emphasis on her name, “broke up with me.”

For some odd reason, Sasha wasn’t really expecting that to be the reason that he was here by _himself_.

“Well, that sucks.” Sasha offers. When it comes to consoling strangers, it was almost a lost cause. She tried, though. _Boy_ did she try.

“It truly does.” Rhys says, burying his face in his hands.

“You, uh, wanna talk about it?” She says awkwardly, mixing the schnapps, orange juice, and ice  in the shaker.

“She told me she just didn’t feel the same way anymore, but I have my suspicions that she liked someone else. There was the whole ‘let’s be friends’ thing, but I don’t know if that’s actually going to work, you know?”

Sasha does know. She hasn’t experienced the breakup-turning-into-friends thing herself in a long while, but she’s seen it with Fiona and some of her girlfriends. They break up, and Fiona is determined to stay friends with them because she still likes them, but it just didn’t work out sometimes.

When she’s done mixing the drink and shaking it, she wets the rim with orange juice and then sprinkles sugar on it. She pours the drink into a highball glass and sets it on a coaster in front of Rhys, who still has his hands in his face.

“Yeah, I get you. You…wanna cherry as a lil garnish or something? For your drink.”

“Do they… usually come that way?” Rhys says, uncovering his face. His voice is small.

“No, but I thought you’d like it.”

Rhys takes the drink. “Thanks, Sasha.”  He takes a sip, and his eyes immediately widen. “This is so good! Do you always put sugar on the rim of the glass?”

Sasha is kind of embarrassed now. She doesn’t want to admit that was another thing she had done to cheer him up.

“No.” There’s an awkward moment of silence before she adds, “Surprise!”

“O-Oh. Thank you.”

Sasha offers him a warm, gentle smile. “No problem.”

Rhys sighs once more, setting his drink on the coaster. “Sorry I’m being such a downer.”

“Hey, you’re not. I…sort of get it? Kind of?”

Rhys grins at her. “I can _totally_ tell. Your face totally reads ‘relatable’ right now.”

“I…haven’t been in a relationship for a while, now.” Sasha admits. She wonders why she’s telling this to a complete stranger. But more than that, she wonders why it doesn’t feel awkward or uncomfortable.

“Oh…Oh God, I’m so sorry. I—”

Sasha waves off her awkward customer. “No, no. You don’t have to apologize or anything. I’m…kind of okay with it, I guess? Although, it is kind of lonely sometimes.”

“So you’re not okay with it?”

Sasha sighs longingly, “I guess not. But what can you do? The world is full of all kinds of weird people.”

“Thank you,” Rhys says.

Sasha waves him off, “You don’t seem _that_ weird. You did break my stuff, though. That wasn’t cool, man.”

Rhys’s face turns a bright red. “I’m going to pay for that! I’ll pay for it right now! How much?” It takes until she’s laughing him that Rhys realizes she’s pulling his leg.

“Seriously though,” she says once her laughter had subsided into a repressed giggle, “It’s just always been Felix, my sister and me. And August too, I guess. It’d feel weird changing it up, but I kind of really want to.”

“Who are Felix and August?”

“Felix is…kind of like me and my sister’s guardian. He took us in after we tried to pickpocket him.”

Rhys’s reply is a slow, confused blink.

Sasha laughs at him again. “We don’t do that stuff, anymore. Sort of. Not since we started working at the Purple Skag. August is the owner and he gave us the jobs. We’re real thankful for him. He really helped us turn our lives around.”

“You ever consider dating August, maybe?”

“ _No_. _No way_.” Sasha’s reply is immediate. “He’s just a really good friend. There’s no way in hell I’d mess that up. I don’t even _want_ to.”

A look of disgust is shown on Sasha’s face and Rhys can’t help but laugh. “Okay, okay. Sorry I even brought it up.”

“Sorry…it’d just be _way_ too weird.”

Rhys takes a sip from his drink. “I get that.” He sets the drink down. “Sorry if this weird, but this is like the _best_ fuzzy navel I’ve ever had? You’ve got excellent drink crafting skills.”

“Why, thank you, Rhys.”

Rhys smiles. “No problem, Sasha.”

There’s some awkward silence. Rhys sips on his drink, and Sasha is trying to figure out what to do to make the silence less…silent.

“So, um, do you feel any better?”

Rhys chuckles. “Yeah, actually, I do. For a couple of minutes I even forgot about… _her_. Thanks for all your help, Sasha.”

“I didn’t do anything.” Sasha says, a knowing smile already planted on her face.

“Uh-huh, yeah. Right.”

She gives him a sheepish grin. “You’re welcome. And for real, don’t worry about the glass. They don’t even cost that much; it’s not a big deal.”

Rhys nods, “Alright, I won’t. For real.”


End file.
